"any level of actual is good enough."
 

I'm gonna take that as a vote for 'intrinsic'.

This is absolutely correct.

I don't think animals are persons, just because that's where I want to draw the line. To draw it anywhere else makes things messy. But some animals are clearly self-aware and can think.

If personhood is intrinsic, then some animals are persons.

I fall into the camp of personhood being bestowed. That way I can say that it's fine to eat pork, even though pigs are smart.

"I can say that it's fine to eat pork, even though pigs are smart"
 

If a cannibal is one who eats his own species, what would be the word for the self-aware who eat the self-aware (assuming pigs are)?

I struggle to justify a definition of the human experience which claims that what we think/feel about ourselves is-- in any objective sense-- different than what we refer to as "instinctive" behavior in "lower" life forms.

Our highly-vaunted ability to use logic and reason for problem-solving has been proven ineffective when compared to the unconscious deliberation that occurs on auto-pilot. Our emotional experiences are literally nothing more than a complex soup of hormones and neurochemicals—physical substances with predictable properties! Our feelings and therefore actions are dictated by a rush of impulses that drives us forward, just like an ant. The ant "experiences" this, no differently than we do.

The entire western view of man as a perfect "thinking, reasoning" entity with "self-awareness" is built on bluster and hubris. And, irrespective of the inconvenient implications, there’s no evidence to suggest we’re different in any meaningful way from other vertebrate, insect, or even "inanimate" plant life. We’re running a program written in the code of unfolding proteins.

So if we’re talking about objective definitions, there is no necessity for the concept of a "person" if based on "unique" properties –it is imaginary from its very inception.

"So if we’re talking about objective definitions, there is no necessity for the concept of a "person" if based on "unique" properties –it is imaginary from its very inception."

Well, that's one view.

It's not convenient, but I can't avoid the conclusion.

"It's not convenient, but I can't avoid the conclusion."
 

Okay.

You'll pardon others who don't share that conclusion, yeah?

Of course, since the world can't function if this is what we believed.

I misspoke by using the word "necessity" --I meant to say it isn't necessitated by following a trail of evidence.

It is necessitated by necessity.

Flint
 

You're a determinist, yeah?

I suppose so. In the sense that we're skating on the surface of a layer of abstraction which we aren't designed to, and therefore it isn't possible for us to understand the web of interconnected causal relationships that underlie it. The part of life we experience and ascribe meaning to exists within an emergent state that arises from a network of infinitely complex mechanical operations. We can't understand it or see it--just as it is said of God. It works "in mysterious ways." And within that layer, where we live, there are properties that are disconnected in any meaningful sense from their deterministic foundation. Ultimately, though I find it inconceivable that the universe isn't an orderly hierarchy of causes and effects that operate by a set of rules.

ESPECIALLY that there are "special" rules and exceptions for a "special" group of bipedal apes that are hallucinating a version of reality based on a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, and ascribing "special" meaning to it based on how their big brain chemicals makes them feel.

Well then, I guess I'll put you in the 'bestowed' category.
 

Well then, I guess I'll put you in the 'bestowed' category (cuz, obviously, you don't think personhood is intrinsic [or, as a category, special]).

You could say that a deterministic universe makes everything intrinsic, but something as ephemeral as the "true nature of person-hood" is so many layers abstracted from the deterministic substrate, it's difficult even to suggest that we're bestowing something we're intrinsically determined to bestow.

I do think that's possible, but it would mean the main category of "un-person" is neuro-atypical individuals.

From a Darwinian perspective, humans are utterly unique. Just looking at outcomes: we are able to defeat all predators, adapt to all conditions, learn across multiple generations, artificially extend our lifetimes, etc. The list goes on.

This wild advantage is just enormous. We're the only species living on all continents. We managed all these things within a hundred thousand years of our existence. This is unique.

I'm pretty convinced the apex organisms are any number of bizarre parasites which phase through multiple unrelated forms, each designed to strategically manipulate their hosts to achieve very specific goals. As a category, they've been shown to control so many key aspects of organism behavior that they essentially control the entire planet.

Are they aware that they control the entire planet?

To me this always comes down to the tautological exercise of measuring thing using "human-like qualities" as the yardstick. OF COURSE there's only one species that's the best at being itself. That's true of EVERY species.

It's only unique right here and now. The fossil record is shockingly spotty, when you really start looking at it. (I say this as someone who just walked through the Museum of Natural History yesterday...)

Everything we know about some of the most famous, "classic" dinosaur species is based on a total of three complete skeletons, worldwide. There are numerous species for which we have literally nothing but a single arm bone, or similar. Meanwhile, just this year we confirmed a new hominid species we'd never known about before, which shifted our understanding of when various hominids moved across the continents by tens of thousands of years.

For all we know, a precocious species of dinosaur (or something else) industrialized in the last couple thousand years of their millions of years of existence, but as it turns out no dinosaur computers sank into a peat bog to be preserved. Even a plastic bottle takes just 450 years to decompose--a lot if you're the manager of a garbage dump in postmodern humanity, but a fucking eye blink compared to the 65 million years between us and a Tyrannosaurus. A billion years ago, Mars was a lush, extremely habitable world. Could have been a whole, fully industrialized civilization there that died off and is now eroded to nothing. And there's nothing to say that, should we manage to kill ourselves off, some highly intelligent species of parrot, or dolphin, or octopus might not advance in our place and become "able to defeat all predators, adapt to all conditions," etc.

I'm with Flint. As individuals we're just bags of chemicals, and as a species we're not remotely unique.